According to Joshua Cooper Ramo’s provocative new book, “The Age of the Unthinkable,” one study — in which hundreds of experts in subjects like economics, foreign policy and politics were asked to make predictions about the short-term future and whose predictions were evaluated five years later — showed that foxes, with their wide-ranging curiosity and willingness to embrace change, tended to be far more accurate in their forecasts than hedgehogs, eager for closure and keen on applying a few big ideas to an array of situations.

It’s a finding enthusiastically embraced by Mr. Ramo, who argues in these pages that today’s complex, interconnected, globalized world requires policy makers willing to toss out old assumptions (about cause and effect, deterrence and defense, nation states and balances of power) and embrace creative new approaches. Today’s world, he suggests, requires resilient pragmatists who, like the most talented Silicon Valley venture capitalists on the one hand or the survival-minded leadership of Hezbollah on the other, possess both an intuitive ability to see problems in a larger context and a willingness to rejigger their organizations continually to grapple with ever-shifting challenges and circumstances.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General

1. mari wrote: Oh yes, rejigger away, that is what the fascists in our government are working at day and night. Ramos suggests that we cast aside, “outdated” things like democracy, individual rights and freedoms, and regress to the days of slavery, as in his ancestors day, when they invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade, after slaughtering Mayans and other indigenous times. April 28, 8:24 pm | [comment link]

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